I attended a talk about the Spanish Flu a few weeks ago and learnt that there are 15 million masks sitting in a warehouse in Wellington in readiness for a pandemic. NZ has a population of 4.5 million and those masks won't last long. They have to be replaced every few hours when they become wet from moisture in the breath.flyer templates for pages]]>
Tue, 11 Dec 2018 01:30:25 +0000http://www.avianflutalk.com/wow-this-is-serious_topic37950_post275150.html#275150http://www.avianflutalk.com/many-doctors-fear_topic38592_post274946.html#274946
Author: Kilt5Subject: Many Doctors FearPosted: November 23 2018 at 3:15pm

Many doctors fear a repeat of the world's 1st, only flu pandemic 100 years later

It’s been 100 years since the United States, and the entire world, felt the wrath of the influenza pandemic. With over 50 million people killed, including an estimated 675,000 Americans, it still remains the most impactful and dangerous public health pandemic in modern history.

“The 1918 pandemic was the worst in recorded history,” said William Schaffner, M.D., medical director for the National Foundation of Infectious Diseases. “We still don’t know exactly why that virus was so fierce, but it indeed was said to affect around one-third of the entire population of the earth.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a pandemic as an outbreak of disease that spreads across several countries or continents, affecting a large number of people. This differs greatly from an epidemic, which is a more sudden spread of disease in a more concentrated area, affecting a more specific population.

Last season was a bad one.]]>
Fri, 16 Nov 2018 23:19:03 +0000http://www.avianflutalk.com/flu-season-for-the-northern-hemisphere_topic38580_post274875.html#274875http://www.avianflutalk.com/80000-americans-died-of-flu_topic38512_post274494.html#274494
Author: Kilt5Subject: 80,000 Americans died of fluPosted: September 28 2018 at 4:30pm

80,000 people died of flu last winter in US

NEW YORK (AP) — An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease's highest death toll in at least four decades.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with The Associated Press.

Flu experts knew it was a very bad season, but at least one found the size of the estimate surprising.

"That's huge," said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert. The tally was nearly twice as much as what health officials previously considered a bad year, he said.

In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to 56,000, according to the CDC.

Last fall and winter, the U.S. went through one of the most severe flu seasons in recent memory. It was driven by a kind of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths, particularly among young children and the elderly.

The season peaked in early February and it was mostly over by the end of March.

The Next Pandemic Will Be Arriving ShortlyForeign Policy-2 hours agoThat's why it's so difficult to control and why recurrent epidemics continue to crop up: There have been five epidemics of H7N9 since 2013 in China alone, the ...

When researchers created a vaccine, they largely put an end to the 2013 bird flu pandemics in chickens, capping a worldwide health scare. But now, scientists have found new versions of the viruses in ducks. Researchers recommend vaccinating the nearly 3 billion ducks produced in China each year straightaway.Virulent Virus

Back in 2013, authorities detected H7N9, a version of the flu that infects birds, in Chinese poultry markets. Soon after, they found the viruses in chicken farms. The chicken industry suffered major losses. Then the bird flu spread to humans. The World Health Organization has confirmed nearly 1,000 cases of H7N9 in people since 2013. And controlling and eradicating the virus has been a high priority for Chinese authorities. They slaughtered millions of infected chickens and introduced a vaccine in September 2017.

Hualan Chen, an animal virologist at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in Heilongjiang, China, and colleagues wanted to know how well the vaccine worked. So, the researchers surveyed poultry markets and farms before and after the vaccination program took place. Altogether the team collected close to 54,000 poultry samples across China.

They found that the vaccine was indeed effective against H7N9. Before implementation of the vaccines, the researchers detected 306 H7N9 viruses, but only 15 afterward. In a follow-up analysis to the survey, the researchers found the vaccine was able to produce an immune response in chickens that protected them against the virus. All the chickens they tested remained healthy and survived the infection.

“Our data show that vaccination of chickens successfully prevented the spread of the H7N9 virus in China,” Chen said in a statement. “The fact that human infection has not been detected since February 2018 indicates that consumers of poultry have also been well-protected from H7N9 infection.”Duck Vaccine

Although the H7N9 pandemics mostly affected chickens, the scientists discovered some of the viruses in ducks during their survey. They also came across another highly pathogenic virus in the ducks, H7N2. To find out how severely these viruses affected the waterfowl, the researchers infected ducks with the viruses. Of the eight viruses they tested, the H7N2 virus and one of the H7N9 viruses were lethal in ducks. When the team analyzed the viruses’ genetics, they found both had picked up parts of the chicken H7N9 viruses and some unknown duck viruses. They suspect these additions are what made the flu so severe in the ducks.

When the researchers tested how well the vaccine protected against the H7N2 virus, they found that all the ducks remained healthy and survived. Ducks that were infected with the virus but did not receive the vaccine died within eight days, the scientists report today in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

“Fortunately, our study indicates that the current vaccine will work well in ducks, so we do not need to develop a new one,” Chen said. “We suggest applying the … vaccine in ducks immediately.”

I read some doctors plan to bug out and hide and reemerge when its all over - they are real preppers - they know Docs and Nurses will die]]>
Wed, 05 Sep 2018 03:18:37 +0000http://www.avianflutalk.com/the-next-plague_topic37466_post274174.html#274174http://www.avianflutalk.com/the-next-plague_topic37466_post272208.html#272208
Author: ThirzaSubject: The next plaguePosted: August 20 2018 at 2:16am

I AGREE WITH YOU read bout the anavar IN HOSPITALS YOU CANT IAMAGINE HOW DIRTY ROOMS THEY HAVE AND FOOD IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO LIVE ]]>
Mon, 20 Aug 2018 02:16:13 +0000http://www.avianflutalk.com/the-next-plague_topic37466_post272208.html#272208http://www.avianflutalk.com/wow-this-is-serious_topic37950_post272178.html#272178
Author: CRS, DrPHSubject: Wow this is SeriousPosted: August 18 2018 at 10:48pm

Thanks, Kilt! I've followed the Clade X exercises and know people who participated. It was a very well-thought-out exercise, down to the type of virus selected (parainfluenza with Nipah genes, bioengineered etc.).

We cannot predict which virus will hit us in the future, but there will be one. It will likely be an emergent reassortment of avian and swine flu genes, much like the H1N1 that came around several years ago (our last true influenza pandemic).

I'm always watching and will let you all know if I hear anything. Be safe and make sure you get your routine vaccinations (including tetanus), if the SHTF, you won't be able to get those.

Yes, WOW! That is why Albert made this Forum. We are trying to get people to stay in their homes when a pandemic hits. Some will live some will die but all who remain in their homes, have n95 masks when they go out, will have a better chance. It will happen when no one knows but I like many here on this forum try to prep to stay alive. ]]>
Fri, 17 Aug 2018 19:09:48 +0000http://www.avianflutalk.com/wow-this-is-serious_topic37950_post272142.html#272142http://www.avianflutalk.com/wow-this-is-serious_topic37950_post272139.html#272139
Author: Kilt5Subject: Wow this is SeriousPosted: August 17 2018 at 4:29pm

ARIS: Russia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N2 bird flu virus on a farm in the Kostromskaya region in the west of the country, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said, citing a report from Russia's Agriculture Ministry.

The virus killed 506 out of a flock of almost 500,000 birds on a farm in Harino, the OIE said in a note published on Friday. Another 1,223 birds were slaughtered.

H5N6 avian influenza virus (AIV) has caused sporadic, recurring outbreaks in China and Southeast Asia since 2013, with 19 human infections and 13 deaths. Seventeen of these infections occurred since December 2015, indicating a recent rise in the frequency of H5N6 cases.Methods

To assess the relative threat of H5N6 virus to humans, we summarized and compared clinical data from patients infected with H5N6 (n=19) against data from two subtypes of major public health concern, H5N1 (n=53) and H7N9 (n=160). To assess immune responses indicative of prognosis, we compared concentrations of serum cytokines/chemokines in patients infected with H5N6, H5N1, H7N9 and 2009 pandemic H1N1 and characterized specific immune responses from one surviving and two non-surviving H5N6 patients.Results

H5N6 patients were found to have higher incidences of lymphopenia, and elevated alanine aminotransferase and lactate dehydrogenase levels compared to H5N1 and H7N9 patients. Hypercytokinemia was detected at substantially higher frequencies from H5N6 patients compared to those infected with other AIV subtypes. Evaluation of adaptive immunity showed that both humoral and cellular responses could be detected in the H5N6-infected survivor, but cellular responses were absent in the non-survivors. In addition, the surviving patient had lower concentrations of both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines/chemokines compared to the non-survivors.Conclusions

Our results support that H5N6 virus could potentially be a major public health threat, and suggest it is possible that the earlier acquisition of cellular immunity and lower concentrations of cytokines/chemokines contributed to survival in our patient. Analysis of more patient samples will be needed to draw concrete conclusions.AIVs, H5N6, clinical characteristics, humoral and cellular immunityTopic:

TUARAN: Sabah Veterinary Services Department has called on residents of Kampung Kaulan and its surrounding area here not to hide their livestock from the authorities.

This comes following the bird flu outbreak in the district.

The department director Harun Abas today noted that there have been cases of individuals hiding their geese to avoid them from being culled.

“During our ongoing monitoring to dispose livestock in and around the bird flu outbreak area, which is within a five-kilometre radius, we spotted geese being caged and hidden in the woods.

“Such situation should not have happened. The people should know that this is a serious outbreak. If the department issues an order to dispose all poultry, such instruction must be adhered to,” he said when contacted by NSTP.

On Aug 3, the state government ordered the department to declare Kampung Kaulan as a bird flu outbreak area after a chicken farm here tested positive for the avian flu virus.

Bird flu kills one in Vietnamwww.worldbulletin.net-10 Aug. 2018Virus H5N1 was detected in the post-mortem blood tests of the 60-year-old victim who died Thursday in Ho Chi Minh City, Xinhua reported, ...http://www.worldbulletin.net/health-environment/204858/bird-flu-kills-one-in-vietnam

Study shows potential of H5N1 AI virus to cause pandemicPoultry World-12 Jul. 2018One of the largest studies of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus genetic sequences from poultry and wild birds has found 39 distinct substitutions ...https://www.poultryworld.net/Health/Articles/2018/7/Study-shows-potential-of-H5N1-AI-virus-to-cause-pandemic-309030E/

that last article is the kicker]]>
Sat, 11 Aug 2018 23:35:59 +0000http://www.avianflutalk.com/we-are-close-now_topic37931_post272047.html#272047http://www.avianflutalk.com/unprepared_topic37683_post271677.html#271677
Author: Kilt5Subject: UnpreparedPosted: August 03 2018 at 3:12pm

Bird flu hot spot: Scientists track virus in huge migration

MIDDLE TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Huge flocks of famished birds scour the sands of Delaware Bay for the tiny greenish eggs an army of horseshoe crabs lays every spring.

It's a marvel of ecology as shorebirds migrating from South America to the Arctic time a stop critical to their survival to this mass crab spawning. It's also one of the world's hot spots for bird flu — a bonanza for scientists seeking clues about how influenza evolves so they just might better protect people.

"Eventually, we would like to be able to predict which would be the next pandemic," said flu pioneer Robert Webster of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

These humble beaches turn into a mixing bowl for influenza between mid-May and early June, as thousands of shorebirds and gulls crowd together and swap viruses. Researchers carefully step around the nesting crabs to scoop up the evidence — potentially flu-infected bird droppings.

"We have trained our eyes for this, that's for sure," said St. Jude researcher Pamela McKenzie as she bent over damp sand last month in search of the freshest samples to go on ice for later testing.

Not just any splat will do. Too dry, and tests might not be able to detect virus. Too big, and it's likely not from the species that carries the most flu here, the calico-patterned ruddy turnstone.

Why test birds? "That's where all flu viruses come from," said Richard Webby, who directs St. Jude's Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance, a program funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Aquatic birds, including wild ducks and migrating shorebirds, are considered nature's main reservoir for influenza.

Whether it's the typical winter misery or a pandemic, every strain that infects humans "started off somewhere along the family tree in the aquatic bird reservoirs," Webby said.

Usually wild birds don't get sick, simply trading flu viruses they carry in the gut. But every so often strains from wild birds kill domesticated chickens and turkeys, and threaten pigs or even people, too.

St. Jude's annual study at Delaware Bay offers a glimpse into little-known efforts around the world — including testing migrating ducks in China and Canada, and live poultry markets in Bangladesh — to track how bird flu circulates and changes, information that can help determine what vaccines to make for animals and people.

And nowhere else in the world have scientists found so many shorebirds carrying diverse flu strains as when red knots, ruddy turnstones and other species make their migratory stopover at this bay nestled between New Jersey and Delaware.

Most bird flu isn't easily spread to people, stressed McKenzie, who doesn't even wear gloves as she pooper-scoops along a beach before the tide washes back.

Still, "it's amazing how the virus can change so rapidly, what genes they inherit," added McKenzie, who oversees St. Jude's global bird flu surveillance.

The U.S. stockpiles just-in-case vaccines against worrisome strains.

"It only has to happen once," Webby said. "The right virus comes and gets into the right population which happens to fly over the right farm of turkeys which happens at the right time of year where the right farmer picks up the wrong bird — and we're in trouble."

_____

Webster, now an emeritus virologist at St. Jude, made the connection between bird and human flu decades ago when he found some seabirds in Australia carrying antibodies against the strain that caused the 1957 pandemic. In 1985, his continuing hunt for bird flu took him to Delaware Bay.

Today, scientists know that if two different types of flu infect a single animal at the same time — say a pig catches both a chicken strain and a human strain — the genes can shuffle to produce a totally new virus.

But worry about bird flu as a threat to both poultry farms and humans has grown since a strain named H5N1 spread directly to people in the late 1990s in Hong Kong's crowded live-poultry markets. Cousins of that virus have cropped up, as has another flu named H7N9 that since 2013 has infected more than 1,500 people in China through close contact with infected chickens.

Those are very different viruses than what St. Jude finds in shorebirds passing through Delaware Bay, Webby said. For some reason, viruses carried by Asian and European birds rarely make it to the Americas, he said, but it's important to look — and to understand the normal ebb and flow of different strains so it's more obvious when something new crops up.

The research is "one way to stay a little bit ahead of the virus," said Marciela DeGrace of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Understanding how this virus can change and how much it can change in a quick amount of time is going to be critical for us to make countermeasures like vaccines."

_____

Why flu erupts during the Delaware Bay stopover remains a mystery. But the longest travelers arrive wasted, and must double their weight in two weeks.

"You can hold a bird and say, 'This bird just got here.' They're here to do work," said Alinde Fojtik of the University of Georgia's Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, a longtime flu researcher who this year volunteered her vacation to help count and tag shorebirds.

So the birds can feast uninterrupted, only scientists and conservation workers are allowed on their preferred beaches, carefully catching and counting them, testing their overall health and tagging them for tracking as the migration continues.

For the flu hunters, finding the right spot is a trick. St. Jude researcher Patrick Seiler pulls out binoculars: Nope, mostly gulls on one beach. Down the road, he spots a better target, a crowd of ruddy turnstones with their distinctive black, white and brown plumage.

The skittish birds take flight as the team approaches. Each dropping gets whisked up on a cotton swab, put into a small vial of preservative and stored in a cooler.

The team carried more than 600 samples back to St. Jude's labs in Memphis, Tennessee, where researchers are beginning the monthslong process to test how many droppings harbor flu and what kind. The viral library is used for further experiments to test how well strains spread, said NIH's DeGrace.

"I would love to be able to look at the sequence of virus we find in Delaware Bay this year say, 'Uh-oh, that's the guy that's coming.' We're not at that point yet," Webby cautioned. "That's our end goal, to be able to say, 'Uh-oh, here's something we have to worry about.'"

__

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

I agree Kiwimum. When my late husband had operations so many different types of operations I sanitized his room as soon as he was brought back from recovery. You would not believe how dirty each room was. I purchased hospital wipes and used Lysol on many surfaces. I also had to request that the Nurses and Doctors washed their hands if they touched my husband. I am sure they thought I was a little nutty. However, my husband NEVER had an infection. I spent 24 hours with him with all of his operations, never left him.

If we had a pandemic and I or my son do not get ill we will be lucky. We will stay at home if we have a pandemic and I would not go to a hospital it would be a death trap.]]>
Sat, 23 Jun 2018 15:56:25 +0000http://www.avianflutalk.com/the-next-plague_topic37466_post270887.html#270887http://www.avianflutalk.com/the-next-plague_topic37466_post270886.html#270886
Author: TechnophobeSubject: The next plaguePosted: June 23 2018 at 3:35pm

Spot on.

Spot on, KiwiMum

An autoclave is just an oven with a timer for 10-30 minutes (depending on size and heat conductivity of item to be sterilized) and a thermostat for 125*C. So, I wrap surgical supplies in plastic (roasting bags) and seal them up with micropore tape - which handles the heat well and can be labelled in biro afterwards with a date. I don't think I have met a single nurse who could do that, I doubt some doctors would.

Our whole medical system has lost its self sufficiency. We gained some great stuff in the trade and our life-expectancy has increased,. But in a national crisis: help yourself, or do without.

And once medical centres realise that they are running out of masks and disposable protection items, there won't be a thing they can do about it as they have all disposed of their sluice rooms and stocks of linen masks and aprons years ago. Even if they wanted to reinstate the usage of such items they no longer have the items to use or the facilities in which to sanitise them.

The other thing that worries me about any future pandemic, is that generally nurses today work such long hours and have so much medical responsibility - much more than they ever used to - that none of them undertake general hygiene issues, these are all farmed out to external cleaning agencies and consequently hospitals and the like are filthy. In the event of a pandemic, I don't think any nurse who qualified in the last 20 years would even know how to properly clean a ward, and even if he or she did, they would feel it was beneath them.

When MRSA flourishes in hospitals across the world because we've become too reliant on anti biotics and complacent about hygiene, what hope would we have in a flu pandemic?

Over the last 3 weeks, we've had flu in our house. My son caught it after attending a nerd convention, and despite my best efforts, I came down with it too. My other son and husband avoided it. Now we live in a small three bedroomed house, with central heating and plenty of hot water and in every way we are luckier than most, and yet still I caught it.

What on earth would happen in a crowded hospital / supermarket / prison / boarding school / sports stadium / or even a family home more crowded than ours? I was diligent about disinfecting surfaces and door handles and handles on the toilets, we were washing our hands and using tissues that were going straight into the fire - in other words, taking all precautions we could, and still it spread.

We're over the worse now but it has made me think that the only way to keep safe if a killer illness came along would be to stay at home and isolate ourselves from everyone else until it passes.

Absolutely right - the supply lines would be cut pretty quickly by a major pandemic and things would run out a lot faster than most people appreciate, including the very things that could potentially stop the spread of a virus, like masks, hand sanitizer and gloves.

Interesting article. Strangely the thing I think will bugger us all in the western world when the next fatal pandemic comes, will be our complete reliance on disposable medical equipment such as masks, gloves, coveralls etc. We will simply find we run out of these very quickly and will be unable to resupply and we no longer have facilities within hospitals to wash and reuse cloth alternatives.

The article talks about the 3 Ebola victims that were treated in America as having generated 3700 pounds of medical waste (gloves, masks, robes etc)and this cost $1 million dollars.

I attended a talk about the Spanish Flu a few weeks ago and learnt that there are 15 million masks sitting in a warehouse in Wellington in readiness for a pandemic. NZ has a population of 4.5 million and those masks won't last long. They have to be replaced every few hours when they become wet from moisture in the breath.

Whilst the article talks of medical workers in the Congo working without any protective gear - not even gloves - and still doing their jobs, I don't think htere's a hope in hell that any western medical workers would put themselves as risk in that way, so we will end up with thousands, if not millions, of sick people with no one to care for them.